0.14 To write the cut: the circumscripture of (e)met

image --> Imagine that you are moving through a landscape filled with softly diffused, golden light. The flowering light becomes an almost tangible presence that surrounds you like a gentle mist. You then come upon a sacred building, a structure composed entirely of open, interconnected archways. As you gaze at the light reflecting off the façade, you notice that the surfaces of the building’s arches appear as mosaics composed of multicolored stones. As you continue to look at the building, the individual stones seem to change places. The building’s interior space appears as an animated pattern of color and light, even as the schematic silhouette of the conjoined archways remains stable. The building thus seems to be somehow solid yet insubstantial, stable yet dynamic, constantly reconfiguring itself anew. Viewed symbolically, the building could be the architectural equivalent of an angelic hierarchy, as sacred forms are translated into three-dimensional spaces, each angel a brick in a living temple of light.

The etymology of the word “hierarchy” derives from the Greek prefix hieros , which means sacred or holy; and archēs , which designates an arch. The primary definition of “hierarchy” in Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary is “a division of angels.” The word “hierarchy” also designates arrangements of power and authority in various professional domains, including in the ranks of the clergy and government, as well as the assemblage of persons or objects into ordered series. See the entry on “hierarchy” in Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary , p. 392. Yet placing the seemingly fixed structure of the hierarchy in motion changes and expands the meaning of the term. Individual positions are no longer fixed but mobile, thereby allowing the hierarchy to be inscripted anew.

Such an imaginary reconceptualization of hierarchy can be seen as a purposeful act of transgression, perhaps even a “hypernomian” one. As Wolfson explains in Venturing Beyond , the concept of the hypernomian references a structure that lies beyond duality, and thus a state of being that exists beyond established categorical dichotomies or received metaphysical dualisms. Regarding the concept of the hypernomian, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond , ch. 3. As such, the idea of the hypernomian resonates with the image of the animated arch. Typically, an arch is a curving architectural element that spans an opening while establishing a materially supporting base. The arch thus simultaneously encompasses positive and negative spaces, grounded and aerial perspectives, which are, in turn, associated with the container and the contained. Archways are also portals that represent points of entry and exit, boundaries that separate the domains of within and beyond. Placing these dynamic terms in motion, an arch ( archē ) not only represents a “beginning” or “point of origin,” but also an endpoint or conclusion. The archway is thus a place that is unified yet multiple, a threshold where the beginning becomes the end, and the end the beginning. Alef, Mem, Tau .